Château d'Yquem 2001

The Timeless Pleasure of Château d'Yquem
Experience the indescribable pleasure that awaits when tasting Château d'Yquem. This extraordinary wine captivates with its intricate balance and complex flavours that evolve and harmonize over time. Like the lingering silence after a Mozart masterpiece, Château d'Yquem remains on the palate, bestowing a unique and prolonged pleasure. In the poetic words of Frédéric Dard, it spreads out like a peacock's tail, leaving an enduring impression.

Pale to medium lemon-gold, the nose is simply WOW—an absolute showstopper, delivering vibrant, youthful lime cordial, pink grapefruit and lemon meringue pie scents followed up by suggestions of chamomile tea, saffron, cassis and nutmeg plus wafts of marzipan, crushed rocks and beeswax. The palate is beyond-belief intense, offering a myriad of decadent citrus fruit preserves and earthy/mineral-inspired nuances, instilling incredible depth, all punctuated by profound freshness and finishing epically long and exquisitely delicious. The alcohol this vintage is 13.6%, while the residual sugar is a whopping 150 grams per litre, beautifully balanced by a total acidity of 4.5 grams per litre of H2SO4. Obviously, the longer readers are willing to cellar this, the more they will get off that ethereal tertiary complexity/experience. This said, for those who love great Sauternes in its youthful/primary flushes, even at this very early stage in its evolution, the multifaceted 2001 d'Yquem will not disappoint.

A picture perfect growing season, with a dry month of September (sunny and moderately warm) that was ideal for retaining acidity and freshness. A few showers came at just the right time and an anticyclone completed a fortuitous set of circumstances that induced widespread botrytisation. The grapes showed rare concentration and great purity. This is clearly a benchmark vintage.